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Nvidia’s GeForce 7900 GS graphics card

Scott Wasson
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AH, AUTUMN. Temperatures start to drop, students head back to school, the leaves begin to turn colors, and video card prices fall all around us. The autumn round of price cuts has become a happy tradition in PC graphics, a time when previously expensive video cards shed their high-priced summer attire and slip on their festive holiday-season price tags.

We’ve already seen ATI make its first moves in this seasonal ritual, lifting the curtains on the Radeon X1950 XTX and its more affordable cousin, the Radeon X1900 XT 256MB. Now it’s Nvidia’s turn to respond with a new GeForce that knows one very cool trick: how to perform like a $300 card while selling for about two hundred bucks. This new GeForce 7900 GS will make your phosphor glow in successive colors almost as rapidly as the GeForce 7900 GT, but it runs quieter and costs less. This isn’t exactly a revolutionary upsurge in graphics power, but it’s better than burning your hand on a Pentium 4.

How exactly does Nvidia’s newest measure up to, well, almost everything else out there at the same price and above? What else do ATI and Nvidia have planned in the autumnal price-slashing fest? Could anything I have to say possibly top this? Keep reading to find the answers.

The long road to $199
The GeForce 7900 GS may seem like a new thing, but it’s not really. Early last summer, Nvidia introduced its first GeForce 7-series product, the GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card, which offered about 10 gigatexels/s of fill rate and just under 40GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GTX had 256MB of memory, 24 pixel shader processors, and eight vertex shader processors. That card was at the top of the GPU performance game at the time, and it cost a princely $599.

Around a year ago, then, the green team uncorked the GeForce 7800 GT, which offered most of the power of the 7800 GTX, but the G70 GPU had one of its vertex shader units and one “quad” of pixel shader processors disabled. Card vendors shipped the thing at $399, and they cranked up the stock clock speeds on the 7800 GT to the point where the boards delivered 9 gigatexels/s of fill rate and about 34GB/s of memory bandwidth—not far off the specs or performance of the GTX, but for substantially less dinero.

Next, this past spring, came the GeForce 7900 GT. Thanks to a die shrink to 90nm, the G71 GPU on the 7900 GT was able to deliver the same basic technology and performance as the 7800 GTX while running cooler and costing less to produce. The 7900 GT debuted at around $299 and packed about 11 gigatexels/s of fill rate and 42GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Now we come to today and the GeForce 7900 GS. The GS is based on the same G71 GPU as the 7900 GT, but like the 7800 GT before it, it’s had the tubes snipped to one of its vertex shader units and one of its pixel shader “quads.” That leaves the GS with seven vertex shader units and 20 pixel shader processors. Board vendors have compensated for the fact, of course, by raising the stock clock speeds of the GPUs. Memory has gotten cheaper over time, too, so the 7900 GS gets 256MB of fast Hynix GDDR3. The end result? Well, in the case of the BFG Tech version of the 7900 GS, you get 10.5 gigatexels/s of fill rate and 42GB/s of memory bandwidth for around two hundred bucks.

Thus the GeForce 7800 GTX’s basic mix of GPU and memory performance has made its way from the rare air at $599 to one third of that amount inside the span of a little more than a year. Not a bad progression, don’t you think?

Fortunately, the GeForce 7900 GS has picked up a trick or two along the way. For reasons I have yet to understand, its predecessor, the 7900 GT, completely lacked any form of temperature-based fan speed control. As a result, the cards were much louder at idle than they needed to be. Temp-based fan speeds are back in the 7900 GS, much to our relief. 7900 GS cards also have the option to support HDCP, the evil necessary for playback of Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies. (Whether or not the cards support this feature will depend on the card vendors’ implementation, so you’ll want to check specs before you order if HDCP matters to you.)

A couple flavors of GS
We already have a couple of flavors of the GeForce 7900 GS on hand here in Damage Labs. First to arrive was a pair of XFX cards suited up in a suave green-and-black color scheme.

XFX is actually prepping two models of 7900 GS. The ones you see pictured above are the faster model, clocked at 480MHz GPU and 700MHz memory. These are the cards we’ve used in our testing in the following pages. These puppies will start at $229. XFX also has a version of the GS clocked at a bone-stock 450MHz GPU and 660MHz memory for $199. Both versions should be available starting today at major online retailers, and these cards come out of the gate with a $20 mail-in rebate deal attached.


7900 GS cards have Hynix DRAMs rather than the Samsung chips on the 7900 GT

BFG Tech’s version of the 7900 GS arrived in Damage Labs just yesterday morning. We haven’t had time to test them yet, but you can see that BFG has taken a different approach to the 7900 GS color scheme.

I don’t think I’d choose aquamarine for my carpet and light green for my wallpaper, but to each his own, I suppose. The BFG 7900 GS OC won’t have to get by on its looks alone thanks to an eye-popping 525MHz GPU clock speed. BFG couples this with a stock 660MHz memory clock, but the GPU speed boost alone should yield some nice performance dividends. The BFG 7900 GS OC will list for a suggested retail price of $249, but street prices should range as low as $199. BFG Tech expects these cards to be “available for purchase from leading e-tailers this week.”

Shuffling the decks
In addition to the GeForce 7900 GS, Nvidia is also introducing a successor to the GeForce 7900 GT in the $299-349 range dubbed the GeForce 7950 GT. This new card will also be based on the G71 GPU, but without any functional units disabled. The 7950 GT’s stock clocks will be 550MHz for the GPU and 700MHz for the RAM, and cards will ship with 512MB of memory onboard. Nvidia is positioning this card as a direct competitor to ATI’s just-introduced Radeon X1900 XT 256MB, only with twice the memory. Like the 7900 GS, the 7950 GT will come with variable-speed fans, and on these cards, HDCP support will be standard. We don’t yet have a 7950 GT to test, but we should have one soon; the GT is scheduled to reach shore shelves next week, on September 14. Around that time, BFG Tech plans to introduce a version of the 7950 GT with a 565MHz core clock and 715MHz memory with a suggested retail price of $349. Street prices may be closer to $299 at online vendors.

These new cards are prompting Nvidia to shuffle the deck a bit. The current 7900 GT will be phased out in the favor of the 7950 GT, while the GeForce 7600 GT will move down-market to make room for the 7900 GS, landing in the $149 to $170 range. The GeForce 7900 GTX will remain at $399.

You may be wondering, meanwhile, what ATI sells at around $200 that would compete with the GeForce 7900 GS. Good question. ATI introduced the Radeon X1800 GTO back in March for $249, along with a 256MB version of the Radeon X1800 XT for $329. Both cards are now scarce, and the X1800 XT 256MB never did seem to materialize in large volumes. Some time later, ATI very quietly introduced the Radeon X1900 GT, but never sent us one for review. Nevertheless, the Radeon X1900 GT is probably ATI’s best representative in this price range, selling for about $220 with 256MB of memory and 36 pixel shader processors. We made arrangements to have an X1900 GT to include in this review, but unfortunately, they fell through at the last minute, so we had to sub in the Radeon X1800 GTO as ATI’s representative at the $199-249 price point. My apologies for not having an X1900 GT.

Truth be told, it doesn’t much matter, anyhow. ATI is widely rumored to be preparing a new contender in this price range, the Radeon X1950 Pro, and I would expect it to hit store shelves in the next few weeks. This new card will be the true competitor to the GeForce 7900 GS, and we’ll review it as soon as we can get our hands on one.

 

Test notes
We ran into a few snags in our testing, although none of them affected the GeForce 7900 GS.

Most notably, when we tried to run a pair of GeForce 7600 GT cards in SLI, we encountered some odd image artifacts that we couldn’t make go away. The image artifacts didn’t appear to affect performance, so we’ve included results for the GeForce 7600 GT in SLI. If we find a resolution for the problem and performance changes, we’ll update the scores in this article.

Also, the 3DMark06 test results for the Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire system were obtained using an Asus P5W DH motherboard, for reasons explained here. Otherwise, we used the test systems as described below.

Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least three times, and the results were averaged.

Our test systems were configured like so:

Processor Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz
System bus 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped) 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe Intel D975XBX
BIOS revision 0204 BX97510J.86A.1073.2006.0427.1210
North bridge nForce4 SLI X16 Intel Edition 975X MCH
South bridge nForce4 MCP ICH7R
Chipset drivers ForceWare 6.86 INF Update 7.2.2.1007
Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.5.0.1035
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
CAS latency (CL) 4 4
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 4 4
RAS precharge (tRP) 4 4
Cycle time (tRAS) 15 15
Hard drive Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA 150 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA 150
Audio Integrated nForce4/ALC850 with Realtek 5.10.0.6150 drivers Integrated ICH7R/STAC9221D5 with SigmaTel 5.10.5143.0 drivers
Graphics Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB PCI-E
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-035722C-ATI drivers
Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB PCI-E + Radeon X1900 CrossFire
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-035515C-ATI drivers
Radeon X1900 XT 256MB PCI-E
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-03584E-ATI drivers
 Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB PCI-E + Radeon X1950 CrossFire
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-03584E-ATI drivers
Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB PCI-E
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-03584E-ATI drivers
 Radeon X1950 XTX 512MB PCI-E
with Catalyst 8.282-060802a-03584E-ATI drivers
 
BFG GeForce 7600 GT OC 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.47 drivers
 
Dual BFG GeForce 7600 GT OC 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.47 drivers
 
XFX GeForce 7900 GS 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.47 drivers
 
Dual XFX GeForce 7900 GS 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.47 drivers
 
GeForce 7900 GT 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
 
Dual GeForce 7900 GT 256MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
 
GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
 
Dual GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
 
GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB PCI-E
with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
 
OS Windows XP Professional (32-bit)
OS updates Service Pack 2, DirectX 9.0c update (August 2006)

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. Their quality, service, and support are easily superior to no-name DIMMs.

Our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

Unless otherwise specified, image quality settings for the graphics cards were left at the control panel defaults.

The test systems’ Windows desktops were set at 1280×960 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The tests and methods we employ are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

 

Pixel-filling power
Pixel fill rate is only part of the equation these days, since pixel shader power is becoming increasingly important. Just being able to paint pixels to the screen and texture them isn’t the end-all, be-all of GPU performance anymore. Nevertheless, it’s still an important part the picture, so we’ll have a quick look at where the GeForce 7900 GS and the 7950 GT fit in.

  Core
clock
(MHz)
Pixels/
clock
Peak
fill rate
(Mpixels/s)
Textures/
clock
Peak
fill rate
(Mtexels/s)
Effective
memory
clock (MHz)
Memory
bus width
(bits)
Peak memory
bandwidth
(GB/s)
Radeon X1650 Pro 600 4 2400 4 2400 1400 128 22.4
GeForce 7600 GT 560 8 4480 12 6720 1400 128 22.4
All-In-Wonder X1900 500 16 8000 16 8000 960 256 30.7
Radeon X1800 GTO 500 12 6000 12 6000 1000 256 32.0
GeForce 7800 GT 400 16 6400 20 8000 1000 256 32.0
Radeon X1800 XL 500 16 8000 16 8000 1000 256 32.0
GeForce 7800 GTX 430 16 6880 24 10320 1200 256 38.4
Radeon X1900 GT 575 12 6900 12 6900 1200 256 38.4
GeForce 7900 GS 450 16 7200 20 9000 1320 256 42.2
GeForce 7900 GT 450 16 7200 24 10800 1320 256 42.2
BFG GeForce 7900 GS OC 525 16 8400 20 10500 1320 256 42.2
XFX GeForce 7900 GS 480 XT 480 16 7680 20 9600 1400 256 44.8
GeForce 7950 GT 550 16 8800 24 13200 1400 256 44.8
BFG GeForce 7950 GT OC 565 16 9040 24 13560 1430 256 45.8
Radeon X1900 XT 625 16 10000 16 10000 1450 256 46.4
Radeon X1800 XT 625 16 10000 16 10000 1500 256 48.0
Radeon X1900 XTX 650 16 10400 16 10400 1550 256 49.6
GeForce 7900 GTX 650 16 10400 24 15600 1600 256 51.2
GeForce 7800 GTX 512 550 16 8800 24 13200 1700 256 54.4
Radeon X1950 XTX 650 16 10400 16 10400 2000 256 64.0
GeForce 7950 GX2 2 * 500 32 16000 48 24000 1200 2 * 256 76.8

Nvidia’s base clock speeds for the 7900 GS make it a little slower in terms of texel fill rate than the GeForce 7900 GT, but memory speeds are the same. BFG Tech and XFX take different approaches to clocking up the 7900 GS from there. BFG raises the core clock to the point where the 7900 GS’s multitextured fill rate nearly matches the 7900 GT, while XFX opts to concentrate most of its efforts on higher memory clocks, giving its 7900 GS more memory bandwidth than a stock 7900 GT. That’s an interesting dynamic, and one we’ll see played out in our tests, because we’re pitting a stock-clocked 7900 GT against the XFX 7900 GS.

The 7900 GS performs as expected in this synthetic fill rate test, beating out the 7900 GT in single-textured fill rate but falling behind with multitexturing. Notice that the 7900 GS simply has the GeForce 7600 GT and Radeon X1800 GTO outclassed, with substantially higher memory bandwidth and multitextured fill rate.

 

Quake 4
In order to make sure we pushed the video cards as hard as possible, we enabled Quake 4’s multiprocessor support before testing.

The 7900 GS is neck and neck with the 7900 GT in Quake 4, well ahead of the Radeon X1800 GTO. Two 7900 GS cards in SLI are a very close match for a GeForce 7950 GX2, as well.

Notice, interestingly enough, what exactly you gain by going from a GeForce 7600 GT to a 7900 GS: about one notch up the display resolution latter. The 7600 GT hits 65.6 FPS at 1024×768, while the 7900 GS hits 64.1 FPS at 1280×1024—approximately equal performance. This dynamic holds true if you raise the resolution for both cards another step—and another.

Also note that the GeForce 7600 GT owner would do better to add a second 7600 GT in SLI than to ditch his current card and slap in a GeForce 7900 GS—or, heck, even a Radeon X1950 XT 256MB.

 

F.E.A.R.
We’ve used FRAPS to play through a sequence in F.E.A.R. in the past, but this time around, we’re using the game’s built-in “test settings” benchmark for a quick, repeatable comparison.

Once again, the 7900 GS shadows the 7900 GT, demonstrating how close the two cards are in real-world performance.

 

Half-Life 2: Episode One
The Source game engine uses an integer data format for its high-dynamic-range rendering, which allows all of the cards here to combine HDR rendering with 4X antialiasing.

The Radeon cards tend to perform relatively well in this game, but that’s not enough to push the Radeon X1800 GTO into close contention against the GeForce 7900 GS. In SLI mode, a pair of 7900 GS cards is nearly as fast as a Radeon X1900 XTX.

 
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
We tested Oblivion by manually playing through a specific point in the game five times while recording frame rates using the FRAPS utility. Each gameplay sequence lasted 60 seconds. This method has the advantage of simulating real gameplay quite closely, but it comes at the expense of precise repeatability. We believe five sample sessions are sufficient to get reasonably consistent and trustworthy results. In addition to average frame rates, we’ve included the low frames rates, because those tend to reflect the user experience in performance-critical situations. In order to diminish the effect of outliers, we’ve reported the median of the five low frame rates we encountered.

We set Oblivion’s graphical quality settings to “Ultra High.” The screen resolution was set to 1600×1200 resolution, with HDR lighting enabled. 16X anisotropic filtering was forced on via the cards’ driver control panels.

Running Oblivion at 1600×1200 in Ultra Quality mode is asking a lot, but you can almost get away with it on the 7900 GS. I wouldn’t want to use these settings for everything, but the game does feel fairly smooth most of the time.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
We tested GRAW with FRAPS, as well. We cranked all of the quality settings for this game, with the exception of antialiasing. However, the game doesn’t allow cards with 256MB of memory to run with its highest texture quality setting, so those cards were all running at the game’s “Medium” texture quality.

The 7900 GS gives up a step or two to the 7900 GT in GRAW’s average frame rates, but the median low frame rates in GRAW are practically identical between GS and GT. In other words, you’d probably never notice the difference between the two by the seat of your pants.

 

3DMark06

3DMark pretty much confirms what we saw in our game testing: that there’s very little difference between the 7900 GS and the 7900 GT.

The vertex shader tests show that the 7900 GS is able to make up for the loss of one of its eight vertex units with higher clock speeds.

 

Power consumption
We measured total system power consumption at the wall socket using an Extech power analyzer model 380803. The monitor was plugged into a separate outlet, so its power draw was not part of our measurement. We tested all of the video cards using the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe motherboard, save for the CrossFire system, which required a different chipset. For that system, we used an Intel D975XBX motherboard.

The idle measurements were taken at the Windows desktop. The cards were tested under load running Oblivion using the game’s Ultra Quality setting at 1600×1200 resolution with 16X anisotropic filtering.

Like most G71-based video cards, the GeForce 7900 GS proves to be remarkably energy efficient given its performance. Although the 7900 GS outperforms the Radeon X1800 GTO at every turn, the X1800 GTO draws more power at idle and while running a game.

Noise levels
We measured noise levels on our test systems, sitting on an open test bench, using an Extech model 407727 digital sound level meter. The meter was mounted on a tripod approximately 14″ from the test system at a height even with the top of the video card. The meter was aimed at the very center of the test systems’ motherboards, so that no airflow from the CPU or video card coolers passed directly over the meter’s microphone.

You can think of these noise level measurements much like the system power consumption tests above, because the entire systems’ noise levels were measured, including CPU and chipset fans. We had temperature-based fan speed controls enabled on the motherboard, just as we would in a working system. We think that’s a fair method of measuring, since (to give one example) running a pair of cards in SLI will cause the motherboard’s coolers to work harder. The motherboard we used for all single-card and SLI configurations was the Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe, which on our open test bench required an auxiliary chipset cooler. The Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard we used for CrossFire testing didn’t require a chipset cooler, so those systems were inherently a little bit quieter. In all cases, we used a Zalman CNPS9500 LED to cool the CPU.

Of course, noise levels will vary greatly in the real world along with the acoustic properties of the PC enclosure used, whether the enclosure provides adequate cooling to avoid a cards’ highest fan speeds, placement of the enclosure in the room, and a whole range of other variables. These results should give a reasonably good picture of comparative fan noise, though.

We measured the coolers at idle on the Windows desktop and under load while playing back our Quake 4 nettimedemo. The cards were given plenty of opportunity to heat up while playing back the demo multiple times. Still, in some cases, the coolers did not ramp up to their very highest speeds under load. The Radeon X1800 GTO and Radeon X1900 cards, for instance, could have been louder had they needed to crank up their blowers to top speed. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary in this case, even after running a game for an extended period of time.

As you can see, the GeForce 7900 GT’s lack of fan speed control is not a good situation. This card is louder while sitting idle at the Windows desktop than many solutions are going full-bore in a game. Fortunately, the 7900 GS corrects this deficit, settling in at idle among the quieter setups. The 7900 GS is also not as noisy under load as the 7900 GT. In fact, it’s quieter than the Radeon X1800 GTO and the Radeon X1900 XT 256MB, as well.

A quick note on general trends in acoustics: big coolers and fans are usually quieter, even on cards that expend quite a bit more heat. The GeForce 7600 GT is the loudest card in the pack, despite that fact that it draws less power under load than anything else. That’s because its small fan cranks up to max speed and emits a high-pitched whine. The GeForce 7900 GTX, meanwhile, draws quite a bit of power, but turns out to be the quietest card in the bunch thanks to its large, effective cooler. I’m willing to bet the GeForce 7900 GS could drop a few decibels by going with a larger cooler that has more surface area, even without going to a dual-slot design.

We should also pause here to whisper the praises of the new cooler on the Radeon X1950 XTX. It shaves off decibel under load versus the cooler on the Radeon X1900 XTX.

 
Conclusions
When one of the graphics leaders slaps its top-end GPU onto a card that costs $199, good things tend to follow. Such is the case with the GeForce 7900 GS. For most intents and purposes, it represents a price cut on the GeForce 7900 GT that brings along with it additional welcome relief in the form of temperature-controlled fans. Those two simple things conspire to make the 7900 GS a very attractive package, since its performance easily outstrips the two other cards we tested in the same price range, the GeForce 7600 GT and the Radeon X1800 GTO. The 7900 GS is meaningfully faster than either of those cards, because it tends to run games smoothly at higher resolutions than they can. The 7900 GS also delivers higher performance per watt and lower noise levels while playing games than the Radeon X1800 GTO.

For the moment, that means the GeForce 7900 GS stands alone as the best value in graphics, in my humble opinion. You get all of the power of the GeForce 7800 GTX that cost $599 a little more than a year ago for a third that price. And for those who like to purchase graphics power on an installment plan, the GS presents the option of adding a second card to create an SLI config that is more powerful than a GeForce 7900 GTX or a Radeon X1950 XTX. All of these are good things. However, as I said before, I expect to see a new contender from ATI in this same space very soon, so things may get competitive for the 7900 GS in a hurry. Stay tuned. 

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